Rainy Days
by CaraLee934
Summary: Just another day in Cair Paravel


**Narnia belongs to C. S. Lewis. Not me. (Yes, this makes me very sad.)**

**Much thanks to Marmota-b for beta-reading for me!**

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There were not many miserable rainy days in Narnia. Usually, rainfall was greeted with celebrations and dancing outdoors, splashing in puddles and laughing and becoming soaked through. Occasionally however, in the very early spring or late winter, it would be too bitterly cold to allow any of these usual activities. These were evenings for lighting fires in the hall and engaging in the listening to and telling of tales after the duties of the day were complete. Or simply spending time together in the privacy of their own chambers.

_Or_, Peter, High King of Narnia, Lord of Cair Paravel, and Emperor of the Lone Islands, thought with a wry glance at the pile of papers and parchments stacked neatly across his desk, a_n evening for catching up on trade agreements._

It was all Edmund's fault. He shouldn't have mentioned the unfinished paperwork in front of Susan. A second glance turned into a slight glare at the sight of his brother staring off into the distance as though he could see through the wall of the Cair, lost in his own thoughts, ignoring the tattered scroll in his hands and sitting cross-legged on top of his desk, haphazard piles of official reports, notes, and letters pushed aside to make room.

Technically, there were two studies, one for each king. Peter's slightly larger and Edmund's with a better view of the North-Western shade garden. When they had first moved in however, it had been more like one study, with entire sections of the wall separating the two missing, some of the only damage that the White Witch had managed to wreak on the castle. Mr. Tumnus had informed them that she had killed King Gale IV and his wife, Queen Neris in these very rooms, and the blast of enchanted ice with which she had felled the king was responsible for the gaping hole in the wall.

That had been followed by much wringing of hands on Mr. Tumnus' part and mutterings about how maybe they should find new rooms to serve as the royal offices but Peter had put his foot down and insisted that it would be a dishonor to the memories of the past rulers to abandon their rooms that way.

With some very clever bargaining, Edmund had convinced the Dwarvish stonemasons to simply ensure that the remaining walls and ceiling were stable, and would not collapse and bring the rest of the tower down about their ears. It had offended some sense of propriety of theirs to not repair the hole completely. He had then bribed Dame Norya the Spider Monkey into sewing them a curtain that could be drawn across the gap or pulled back should they so wish. The curtain had been installed and the two of them had happily settled into the arrangement. It made things very convenient indeed. (The girls' studies were across the hall, but were practically unused. Susan usually dealt with her paperwork in the same sunny parlor from which she reigned over the day-to-day business of running an entire castle whenever she wasn't actually out and about in said castle, and Lucy could most often be found in the gardens.)

Unfortunately, Peter had too many documents to be able to relocate, and he was aware that Edmund liked the close proximity to the library afforded by their position. And so the two of them spent many an hour there.

It was not as if their studies were dark, cramped little rooms, quite the contrary. They were cozy yes, but Edmund's had a balcony and a large, stained glass window portraying a winged horse in flight that looked out over a walled garden, and Peter's a huge fireplace of the sort that had benches inside for sitting on during the coldest winter nights so that you were right beside the fire and surrounded by warmth on all sides.

They were not isolated either. As mentioned, they were very near the great library of Cair Paravel, and during the day various councilors and officials were coming and going through the studies themselves. And, of course, they had each other, whenever the curtain was pushed back, which was often.

It was a most curious contrast, the two rooms. Peter had everything stacked and sorted with military precision, chronologically, whether it was local to his own Northern territories, Narnia-wide, or dealt with other kingdoms. (Calormen had an entire shelf all its own already.)

Edmund on the other hand…His "filing system" was of the sort that made sense to no one but himself. At times it appeared as though a whirlwind had blown through and simply distributed the papers wherever they might land, which wasn't far from the truth.

And yet Edmund knew where every single document and scrap of parchment was located, and could produce it on demand. Up to and including that list of exports from Lantern Waste to Owlwood from the first year of their reign. (It had been a very small, unimportant list, consisting only of two buckets of assorted nuts, which had been promptly traded off to Paravel, as the residents of Owlwood are exclusively Owls, and do not eat nuts. It had been a nice gesture on the part of the Squirrels though. Come to think of it, Owlwood would be a good location for a watchtower. Peter made a mental note to approach Duskglider and the rest of the Parliament with the idea.)

But none of this was relevant to the matter at hand, which was that while Peter was working his royal behind off, Edmund was daydreaming. It simply could not be tolerated.

Peter would foreverafter claim that it was Lucy's fault that the bread roll he had thrown at Edmund missed. To be completely fair, this was most likely true, but that didn't mean that Edmund didn't tease him about it for a good long while.

Just as he was about to launch the edible (if slightly stale) projectile at Edmund's head, the door to his half of the conjoined study burst open and slammed shut almost immediately after, with Lucy leaning against it trying to breathe in-between giggles.

I think we may forgive Peter for simply sitting in shock for a moment. It is not every day after all, that one finds oneself facing one's sister in only her shift.

The roll had bounced harmlessly off the stained glass window.

There were a few beats of silence before Edmund yelped and toppled from his perch on his desk with a distinct lack of grace, scattering papers every which way. Peter blinked and tossed a convenient blanket at his under-dressed and shivering little sister.

"Lucy, what on earth are you doing?"

The youngest queen of Narnia just wrapped herself in the blanket and continued laughing, merriment dancing in her blue eyes.

Peter sighed. "We aren't going to have Susan breaking in here looking for you are we?"

Lucy shrugged and plopped down on a crate that held the most recent reports from the Northern Guard. (Mostly concerning the Ettin giants, though there had been rumor of a dragon just beyond the Northern crags.)

"Probably. I ran away and she'll have Bastia track me down."

Edmund had joined them in Peter's half of the studies, making himself as comfortable on Peter's desk as he had previously been on his own.

"Why did you run away, Lu?"

Lucy made a face; combined with her blue lips and chattering teeth it made her look as if she was coming down with something.

"I was getting measured." She held out an arm to indicate what she meant, but neither king needed any elaboration.

Lucy, now less than two months away from her tenth birthday, had recently gone through a growth spurt which resulted in an entire wardrobe that no longer fit. This in its turn resulted in Susan going into a flurry of action and Lucy spending most of her time hiding in the gardens or on the seashore.

Evidently, Susan had taken advantage of the weather to gather the seamstresses and begin work on Lucy's new clothes.

Peter himself had suffered through a similar situation twice already, having had two considerable spurts of growth since they arrived in Narnia two years ago. Edmund, much to his own irritation, had not had any sudden changes in height to require such a situation, all his growth thus far happening gradually and merely necessitating small adjustments.

"But why did you run away?" Edmund repeated, a light frown on his face. "You know she'll just come find you."

Lucy sighed and shifted on the crates, tucking her little bare feet up beneath the blanket.

"It tickles."

"It tickles?" Edmund sounded a little nonplussed. "What do you mean it tickles?"

Lucy gestured at her waist, her hand shaking with cold.

"When they take the tape measure around your waist it tickles."

Peter laughed and, striding out from behind his desk, scooped Lucy up into his arms before reseating himself, ignoring her squeals. Edmund turned so that he faced them, his dark eyes glinting with amusement and firelight.

Peter poked Lucy in the side, causing more squeals and a desperate lunge away from him that nearly knocked Edmund from his perch. He had not realized just how ticklish his baby sister was. She had hidden the secret well and, as a tactician, he approved. As a big brother, he resisted the urge to sulk at having been so deceived. He had known of course, when she was very small, but since the year or so before they came to Narnia he had thought she had grown out of it.

"Peter!" the youngest sovereign was still giggling, but her shivering had abated and she shifted until she was comfortably sprawled, gazing into the fire. Peter wrapped his arms around her, hugged her close and thanked Aslan yet again for his siblings and their safety.

Suddenly he found himself on the floor, the chair knocked over and Lucy scrambling over him to escape Edmund, who advanced with crooked fingers and a wicked grin.

"LUCY ROSE PEVENSIE!"

And then Susan stood in the doorway, looking a little frazzled, her long black hair tumbling down to her waist and blue eyes, usually so calm, flashing in the light from the fire.

Peter decided to simply remain where he had fallen. The dancing flames cast interesting shadows on the intricately carved ceiling, and the laughter of his brother and youngest sister as they fled Susan's wrath was a pleasant background to the scolding Lucy was receiving for running around with so few clothes on, especially in this weather, what _were_ you thinking?

Rainy days, even cold ones, weren't that bad after all.

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**So, here it is, my first foray into publishing Narnia. Narnia is actually not only the fandom that first introduced me to fanfiction many years ago, but is a world and characters that are very near and dear to my heart. Posting something Narnian is something I wrestled with for a long time, I know I can never do Lewis justice, but I do hope that, if he were ever to read this little snippet, he would not think that it was contrary to the idea of Narnia.**

**This story actually came from real life in a sense. I have a sister who designs and sews and she was measuring me. It tickles. Very much. I assure you that being in a situation in which your younger sibling is getting slightly frustrated and looking at you like you are a toddler can be very helpful to the muse!**

**Speaking of muses...Feed Bob? (For anyone who doesn't know, Bob is my pet dragon who lives on reviews.)  
**


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